Molly+Roe


 * SUMMARY; "Molly," age 21, died in July, 1975 after an abortion performed in Massachusetts.**

"Molly" is one of the women Life Dynamics lists on its "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by [|safe and legal abortion].

Molly was 21 years old and 18 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to a Massachusetts hospital in July of 1975. This was Molly's first pregnancy.

Molly was suffering from kidney problems, hypertension, and anemia associated with disseminated lupus erythematosus. Molly had first been diagnosed with lupus three years earlier. The pregnancy was aggravating the disease.

After a week of trying to treat Molly's symptoms without harming her unborn child, doctors decided to perform an abortion, hoping this would abate Molly's symptoms and allow them to treat the lupus problems more aggressively.

For some reason, the doctors chose the [|dangerous saline technique] to perform the abortion, which resulted in Molly's death.

The Massachusetts Medical Society's Committee on Maternal Welfare reviewed Molly's death, and they found the doctor's decisions regarding Molly's treatment to be problematic:

First, they believed that abortion was riskier for this ailing woman than the pregnancy itself was. The decision to abort was thus faulty to begin with.

Second, they questioned the choice of the highly risky saline procedure to perform the abortion. Placing so much saline into the body of a woman whose renal function was already compromised was a very poor choice.

Molly's was not the only tragic death caused by doctors who recommended abortion as a life-saving or health-preserving option for the mother: As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.
 * [|Allegra Roseberry] was pushed into an abortion in order to obtain experimental cancer treatment.
 * [|Anjelica Duarte] sought an abortion on the advice of her physician, and ended up dying under the care of a quack.
 * [|Barbara Hoppert] died after an abortion recommended due to a congenital heart problem.
 * [|Christin Gilbert] died after an abortion George Tiller holds was justified on grounds of maternal health.
 * [|Erika Peterson] died in 1961 when her doctors obtained her husband's permission to perform a "therapeutic" abortion.



LDI Sources:
 * "Saline Abortion and Lupus Erythematosus," Committee on Maternal Welfare, John F. Jewett, //New England Journal of Medicine//, 294:14, Apr. 1, 1976, p. 782-83
 * Massachusetts Department of Health, Database run on maternal deaths

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